Today’s starter is a hardy old perennial – someone schmoozing the hologrammatic John Fisher about selling them the A’s. The new rumor is that Joe Lacob has asked about buying the club and building a new park at Howard Terminal, proving that he’ll take any bayfront property he can get for any reason he can conjure.

Of course, Lacob would be buying the team at the top of its value (Forbes says $495M, and all teams get sold for way more than that these days), which is never good real estate thinking. He’d also have to deal with the same cleanup and construction costs, and he’d still have to figure out a way to get the Warriors into new digs as well. Maybe this is a re-bar-and-concrete combo platter.

But as always, Fisher isn’t selling, because the A’s make fat money every year even in their current architectural state. Anonymity and profitability is a nice way to go through life. Besides, he might want to build on the Howard Terminal site with a gigantic bayside middle finger aimed at the Giants’ park, just for the sheer hell of it.

And who wouldn’t want that for a legacy?

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It was a good day for middle management savings, as Joe Dumars of the moribund Detroit Pistons is calling it a career, and Mike Gillis of the freshly moribund Vancouver Canucks was just shown the door. There are still other candidates out there, of course, but corner offices don’t mean as much as they used to.

And the word you’re looking for is “schadenfreude.”

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Someone who won’t be fired is Kentucky’s John Calipari, but he’s looking forward to some firings in another part of the country. From his upcoming book, “But I Only NEED Them For One Year” (not the actual title), his Tarkanian-esque treatise on his friends at the NCAA:

“The situation reminds me a little of the Soviet Union in its last years,” Calipari wrote (or dictated, just as likely). “It was still powerful. It could still hurt you. But you could see it crumbling, and it was just a matter of time before it either changed or ceased to exist.”

And:“I believe the tide is turning. The NCAA will soon have to reform itself or it will not remain the dominant force in college athletics.”

So Mark Emmert is now Boris Yeltsin, eh? Or maybe it’s prince regent Bob Bowlsby, angling to be the next skipper of the Titanic. Either way, Calipari probably just bought himself a whole new set of investigators.

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Red Sox first baseman Mike Napoli, who has hidden woodland creatures in his beard, on Rangers’ second baseman Elvis Andrus:

“Elvis’ beard is terrible, by the way. Horrendous. He cuts half of his chin off, too I was just up there getting on him about it. Yeah it’s terrible. He looks like Abe Lincoln . . . He has to cut that thing off. It’s so bad, it’s almost embarrassing . . . I can’t even look at him, it’s so bad.”

Napoli is thus returning a level of gamesmanship last associated with the Druids. That’s the kind of detail that would be appreciated in a college town like Boston.

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Good news from Brazil, where national team coach Luis Felipe Scolari has admitted he has no issues with his players coupling during the upcoming tournament (as though abstinence would play in Brazil). But he says any cavortage must be done within strict guidelines.“The players can have normal sex during the World Cup. Usually normal sex is done in a balanced way, but some like to perform acrobatics. We will put limits and survey the players.”Acrobatics? That would have to be some reading:

Question Five: Would you consent to the team trainer checking on you immediately before and after coupling?Question Six: Have you ever purchased a trampoline or indoor use?Question Seven: Can you provide three addresses where your canoodlings will take place, with schematics to show where the furniture is arranged so as to minimize the possibility of catastrophic stumbling?

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And finally, John Rocker, who became a bit of a national punch line after a largely unflattering story from Sports Illustrated’s Jeff Pearlman, paid it forward in his most recent World Net Daily column. He did take pains to call Pearlman a “gossip whore trash journalist”, but acknowledges that “the things I’ve been able to do; the doors that have opened; the places I’ve been able to go and the famous/influential people I now consider friends in large part stem from the notoriety created by that SI piece.

“Because of Sports Illustrated and the recognition that has come along with it, I still have a voice that people listen to 14 years later. I still get interview requests from names like Geraldo Rivera, Neil Cavuto and Michael Savage where I proudly spread the word about Save Homeless Veterans . . . I receive requests on a regular basis to speak inspirationally at various charity events as well as a variety of adult and adolescent groups.”

If Rocker is being serious (and frankly, who could really tell one way or another?), I am now entertaining financial offers from any and all local athletes to enhance their personal brands by describing them in any offensive way that suits their long-term interests. Embezzlers? Hired muscle? Arsonists? Baby crushers? Any and all possibilities will be cheerfully considered.